Last week we reported how EA's launch of SimCity has been far from perfect. At the end of last week we reported how EA has asked their promotion partners to hold off with their adverts for a little bit, while EA tries to work out the 'teething' issues they've has with the game! Since that isn't really good enough for the launch of a new game, EA has apologised to their users saying:
"The server issues which began at launch have improved significantly as we added more capacity. But some people are still experiencing response and stability problems that we’re working fast to address.
So what went wrong? The short answer is: a lot more people logged on than we expected. More people played and played in ways we never saw in the beta.
OK, we agree, that was dumb, but we are committed to fixing it. In the last 48 hours we increased server capacity by 120 percent. It’s working – the number of people who have gotten in and built cities has improved dramatically. The number of disrupted experiences has dropped by roughly 80 percent."
At least EA has recognised that it was slightly short sighted of them, but it seems that the 120% capacity increase shows just how badly EA underestimated the popularity of this game!
To be fair to EA their apology does sound quite sincere and as an extra sorry they have said that everyone who bought SimCity will be given a complementary EA game for PC at some point this month! If you activated your game you will be receiving an email on March the 18th giving you the full details of what to do! EA had this to say about why they chose to give affected users a free game:
"I know that’s a little contrived – kind of like buying a present for a friend after you did something crummy. But we feel bad about what happened."Hopefully we'll see an end to these troubles very soon, but it's one of the problems that we might have to expect more regularly if companies wish to try these sort of 'virtual territory' ideas. What do you think are you happy with EA's response? Have you been affected? Let us know in the comments below!
EA Via BBC.
